


In the Wake

by lovetincture



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mentioned drinking habit, Murder, Murder Husbands, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 18:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: “I can’t do it,” Hannibal said. “What you want me to be, I can’t be that.”A conversation over a body at 4 a.m. It turns out Hannibal can't stop killing, and it turns out Will doesn't really care. There's gallows humor and something that looks a lot like compromise.





	In the Wake

**Author's Note:**

> "[Love] happens, and we live in the wake of a new life." -Coleman Barks

Will woke to find Hannibal gone. He wasn’t sure if Hannibal’s absence was the reason he was up at 4 a.m.—if his body had become so attuned to Hannibal’s presence that its lack was perceived as a flaw in the universe—or if it was merely a coincidence.

That Hannibal was gone was not, in and of itself, unusual. They’d been living in this particular secluded farmhouse on the French countryside for six months now, spending most of their time together, but not all of it. They were hardly attached at the hip, and Hannibal sometimes made supply runs into town without him. 

Will looked out the window and frowned. What was unusual was the fact that it was the middle of the night, and their car was still in the driveway.

“Hannibal?” Will called to the empty house.

He flicked on the bedside lamp, squinting at the sudden brightness. The rest of the house was still dark when he opened the bedroom door. No lights in the kitchen, no lamp to read by.

“Hannibal?” He tried again, but he already knew there would be no answer.

Will sighed and rubbed his hand over the scar on his forehead. It was an old habit, an absentminded gesture left over from another life.

He tugged on socks, boots, and a coat and opened the door to face the frigid winter chill.

* * *

A trail of footprints led from the car to the rickety barn that had come with the property, as unmistakable as sign posts. More than one set of footprints. A prickling feeling crawled up the back of Will’s neck as he followed them.

He knew before he opened the large barn door exactly what he would find, and Hannibal didn’t disappoint.

“I can’t do it,” Hannibal said as soon as Will walked in—said it  _ to _ him, as if maybe he’d been waiting for Will to come, as if this was a continuation of a conversation they’d already been having and Will had merely forgotten. “What you want me to be, I can’t be that.”

It was too late at night for this—too late or too early, depending on your view. Will’s mind stutter-stopped over Hannibal’s words while simultaneously battling the lingering fog of interrupted sleep.

Will eyed the knife in Hannibal’s hand. It gleamed wetly beneath a glaze of red blood. He moved forward slowly, so slowly, as if gentling a spooked animal. He closed his hands around Hannibal’s fingers and carefully prized the knife away.

Hannibal let him. He gave up the handle of the blade easily and without a fight.

Will let out a long gust of breath once it was safely in his hands. He didn’t really expect Hannibal to stick him with a knife again—not really, not after everything they’d done to and for each other—but this was Hannibal, and he hadn’t expected to be gutted the first time either.

It paid to be careful.

Hannibal’s eyes were wide and a little wild this close up. He was breathing hard, from the exertion of felling such a large man or from heightened emotion, it was hard to tell.

“What do you think I want you to be?” Will asked carefully.

“A lamb instead of a wolf,” Hannibal said.  _ “Safe.” _ He spat the word like it was a curse.

Will closed his eyes, already feeling the beginnings of a headache brewing. He counted to ten, slowly. He opened his eyes again, and the scene remained unchanged.

There was Hannibal, there was the body, there was their unused barn full of human detritus. Blood streaked in a thick line across the floor, smeared where the man—middle aged, greying, unimportant to him but almost certainly important to someone—had dragged himself toward the door. A desperate, yet ultimately futile attempt to escape. One of his hands still reached toward freedom.

There was the knife in his own hand, already growing tacky with someone else’s blood.

He dragged his eyes away from the body. It wasn’t hard.

“Do you really think I don’t know you?” Will asked.

His breath fogged the air. It was cold here. The dead of winter, and the barn’s shoddy construction offered poor insulation from the elements. The body would keep if they left it until morning; it was that cold.

He dropped the knife, and it clattered to the floor. He moved close to Hannibal, until they were standing toe to toe and he could feel the mist from Hannibal’s breath.

Hannibal’s blood was still up, he could see it. He could see the monster lurking in Hannibal’s eyes, the bloodlust made all the more keen by a recent kill. Not sated—no, never that. Hannibal was fully himself in this moment, and that meant more predator than man, and it meant fingers twitching even now, aching to wrap around Will’s throat and squeeze, crossed wires confusing lover for threat and prey.

Well, Will was a monster too.

“After all this time. After all that you’ve done, do you really think I don’t know exactly who you are? What you like?” Will laughed. “Do you think I’m afraid of you?”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, because Will knew Hannibal, but Hannibal knew him too.

He didn’t deny it.

“Do you know why?”

“Because you’re afraid you might pick up the knife and join me one day. You’re still afraid of what I might inspire you to become. But Will, I could never force you to be anything.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

“No,” Hannibal admitted. “Never that. But I like to think I’ve grown wiser in my old age.”

Will snorted and ran a hand through his hair, then made a face when he realized he’d just rubbed gore into it. “Cut the crap. You’re not old, Hannibal.”

Hannibal’s lips curved into a small smile. “Still, it’s nice to hear it from your lips.”

“Fishing for compliments,” Will said, and Hannibal gave a small tilt of his head that was as good as a shrug on anyone else.

“We take our pleasures where we can get them.”

The tension in the room had evaporated. Will sat down heavily on a bale of hay, and after a moment, Hannibal took a seat beside him.

“What a pair we make,” Hannibal said.

“Who was he?” Will nodded at the man on the floor.

“I don’t know.” Hannibal leaned down to pull a wallet from the man’s coat pocket. He held it gingerly by the corner and wiped it against a clean part of the coat before flipping it open to look at the driver’s license. “Douglas Reynolds.”

Will held out a hand and gestured for the wallet, and Hannibal handed it over. He was struck with a sudden sense of unreality. This was his life now: rifling through a dead man’s wallet for conversational fodder.

Oh well. In for a penny.

Will held up a business card between two fingers. “Realtor. I’m almost not sorry you killed him.”

That startled a small huff of laughter from Hannibal, and that was all the encouragement Will needed to continue. He supposed it was nice his profiling skills could still be put to some use after everything, unorthodox a use though it was.

“Credit card debt.”

The picture hit him like a knee to the stomach, but he swallowed it down and kept going. Life among monsters was not for the faint of heart.

“Photo in the wallet says family man; punch card for the strip club says unhappily so.” Will flipped the wallet shut and passed it back. “Congratulations, you killed an asshole.”

Hannibal was quiet beside him. Quiet for so long that Will turned to look at him.

He was looking at Will, silently drinking him in.

“You are a wonder,” he said with the kind of all-consuming reverence that still made something in the area of Will’s chest twist with a feeling that was surely too painful to be called love.

That was a lot.

It was still a lot, bordering on too much. He chose not to address it, and he figured he’d goddamn earned that right. Waking up to an eviscerated corpse in the barn was surely a pass to get lost in a bottle and put any deep introspection off for another time.

Will cleared his throat, and Hannibal waited.

“Look, whatever you think I expect of you—” Will sighed and looked at his hands. He flexed them to watch the reddish brown crust flake off in little flecks “I just don’t.”

More silence.

“I never asked you to stop.”

“You don’t approve of killing.”

“You’re right, I don’t. But you don’t like my drinking.”

Hannibal pursed his lips, thinking. “Most people would say that a drinking habit is hardly on par with serial murder.”

“We’re not most people.”

Hannibal hummed. “Indeed we are not.”

Will glanced down at Douglas Reynolds one last time before hefting himself up with a groan. His knees protested at the combination of the low seat and cold weather. Hannibal wasn’t the only one who wasn’t as young as he used to be.

“I’m freezing my ass off. Let’s get back inside.”

“What about him?”

Will waved a hand. “Tomorrow.”

He stuck out his other hand, which Hannibal took. He allowed Will to help haul him to his feet.

It was a pointless gesture and an unnecessary one—Hannibal had just felled a man that looked to be pushing 250 pounds, and he didn’t look any worse for the wear—but the gesture was commonplace and ordinary, and that meant it felt grounding all the same.

They weren’t most people, but ordinary could feel just fine. Will would take it where he could get it.

“I’ll help you shampoo your hair,” Hannibal offered as they made their way back to the house, trampling fresh snow underfoot.

Once upon a time, Will would have refused that offer on principle. Now he didn’t.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can check out my [original writing here](https://hopezane.com) if you're interested.
> 
> [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture) | [Tumblr](http://lovetincture.tumblr.com) | [Dreamwidth](http://lovetincture.dreamwidth.org)


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